Memel, Tilsit, and Königsberg were passed, and finally the blue Baltic and Danzig were in sight. We had almost looked for amber-colored water, so long had we associated the beautiful display of amber jewels in the Berlin shop windows with the Baltic, from which it is taken. Even Homer refers to the Baltic as the resting place of amber, its bed being laid with the sunny stone. A multitude of ship-masts rose from the coast, and from beyond the pointed gables of the old city, lessening in altitude as the vista lengthened. This first glimpse was a more fascinating picture than we were afterward able to find. Yet the hotel helped the preconceived idea that Danzig was really a second Nuremberg. The broad stone steps, or stairway, which started from the _portecochère_, were whitened by ashes, as one so often sees them in Germany—a pretty state of things for a lady descending in a black dress. The room we were to occupy was an immense ball-room, utilized in quiet times for a bed-room. Two candles burned in their tall candlesticks on the center-table, and by the light of the twilight we could see across the street some beautiful and curious carvings in the opposite gabled houses. The price paid for accommodations was large enough to have enabled us to see castles in the air, and to have our ball-room illuminated with gas until morning. We concluded they seldom had guests in this hotel, and therefore made heavy profits when some did come along. That evening we wandered around the old crooked streets—paved in cobble-stones, which wore our shoes almost in pieces—until we were glad to pause in front of the great old red-brick cathedral. Its towers cut the big yellow moon in two at every angle we could see them. We stretched our heads to take in the tremendous dimensions of the cathedral, and the ornamentations of some of the best houses, until we suddenly remembered that it was nearing midnight, and that we had been in actual service at sight-seeing and traveling since an early hour that morning, so we returned to our ball-room and two candles. The next morning, we imagined, we would have a great treat in hunting up old carved furniture, for which Danzig, we had been told by our German friends, was equal to Augsburg; but the antiquarians had left no place unexplored. No trace of massive-legged table or curiously-carved chairs was to be found, save in the Museum and the Rathhaus (Council Hall). The stairway of the Council Hall remains indeed a monument to the ingenious designer and skillful carver, and the judge’s chair is most curious. A fine old convent has been turned into a museum. Its _kreuz gänge_, or cross-passages, give the place a most mysterious, sequestered air, and they are gradually collecting some great pictures and treasures within its walls. But the Rathhaus, in its architecture, surpasses everything in Danzig, excepting, perhaps, its fine old gateways.